


don't wanna let you down (but I am hellbound)

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [53]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: C-PTSD, Catholic Guilt, Community: hc_bingo, Conditioning, Disabled Character, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra did a number on Bucky, Insomnia, M/M, Mentally Ill Character, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trouble Sleeping, bad day, martyrdom is a shared trait, recovery is not linear, self-worth is a problem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 20:57:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2322938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve'd thought about it for a minute. <i>You're saying Bucky had the equivalent of </i>multiple<i> abusive childhoods, one after the other.</i> </p><p>Sam rubbed his forehead. <i>Pretty much. And that shit leaves a lot of marks - I mean, it literally shapes the brain. He might remember when you were kids?</i> Sam grimaced. <i>But the other stuff might basically be mapped in deeper, because it happened so many times over. So much more.</i></p><p><i>Carved in</i>, Steve said, and Sam'd winced. </p><p>He's thought about that a lot, since then.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't wanna let you down (but I am hellbound)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it. 
> 
> This was on a Hurt/Comfort Bingo prompt: "corporal punishment". Contains references to child-abuse/effects thereof in a clinical-ish context.

Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. Steve doesn't find it difficult, anymore, to look back at '43 through '45 and map out the shifts and ebbs of Bucky's mental health. Actually, he can see his own, too, and all the places he'd been cruising right towards his own fiery crash, as soon as the War ended and the world stopped being as simple as "if they're shooting at you, they're bad." He can see the little trips and stumbles, like the camp in Austria and being paralyzed with indecision, for just a moment, over whether or not the camp commandant should live or die. 

None of the inmates had survived, all the other soldiers had either fled or died fighting, but him they'd caught, and for a moment the choice had paralyzed him. And then he'd had to deal with the fact that it had, which hadn't been pretty, and in the end bore a lot of similarities to falling apart here, and now, on the couch. 

Who, and how, and tone of voice. 

( _"Yeah, I mean, wow. That's awful. Being uncomfortable with shooting someone in cold blood. Now there's a character flaw no other could hope to match."_ At the time Steve'd bit his tongue on pointing out that Bucky himself hadn't hesitated, because he'd been pretty sure Bucky would just blithely reply that they already knew Steve was a better person than he was, something he'd done on a couple of occasions by then. Steve hadn't been able to articulate even to himself why that made him so uncomfortable at the time, but he hadn't wanted to hear it, so he'd contented himself with hitting Bucky in the face with a snowball and letting it drop.)

The thing was, Steve's pretty sure that if he charted it all out on paper, the times of Bucky doing well would cross over an awful lot with times Steve _wasn't_ , for the simple reason that it gave Bucky something to do, something he felt needed for. Didn't actually have to be good for him, any more than spending days and nights awake wedged in beside Steve's bed when Steve was down with a fever had been good for him - maybe it was better to say that the overlap would be times when Steve was a bit off with times Bucky _looked_ better, more functional, less (in retrospect, not that Steve'd noticed much at the time) like he was making himself march on a shattered femur and quietly bleeding out the whole way. 

But mostly, Steve knowing all that now means it's not exactly a _surprise_ that by the time Steve can feel the worst of his bad week (week and a half, whatever) fading away, Bucky starts to slide down into his own. A little bit to Steve's own surprise, he doesn't even manage to feel guilty about it himself: it's pretty obvious Bucky overextended himself, but Steve's willing to bet that he actually _felt_ better about - well, a lot of stuff, but especially himself, while he was doing it. And that he picked it. 

And one of the things Steve's been thinking about is that part of free will is getting to make some really stupid, self-destructive decisions, sometimes. 

It's also no surprise to Steve that Bucky does his best to hide it. A little bit frustrating, but not much, really. It's almost a little encouraging that his best is getting _better_ , because at this point Steve's pretty confident about reading Bucky even if most people couldn't, and faking okay better is technically a step on the way to actually being more okay. 

The only thing that worries Steve, worries him more than he's always a bit worried, is that a couple of things don't feel like exhaustion, or a bad week. They feel like sliding backwards, like steps back - away from wanting things, away from it being okay to want things, to have them. It's hard to say exactly, seeing as they still haven't gotten to the point where asking for most stuff is possible, or even where a direct offer works, but it feels like a few of the work-arounds drop off. Like Bucky's pulling back from even trying. 

Or maybe like he's back to trying to rip out _wanting_ instead of trying to rewrite the rules in his head, or find ways around them. 

_What I figure is,_ Sam said last visit, as they were sitting in the park, _your narrative memory, the stuff that happens in your life: that's what teaches you how to regulate emotions, how to predict what's gonna happen next, how to make decisions, all that shit - how to be a person. Right? You learn all of that through experiences. Take the experiences away -_ and he'd mimed dragging something away from the hand he held his coffee cup in with the other one, _you're basically a kid again. You end up with a child's . . . ability to deal with stuff, understand stuff._

He'd paused, sighed and said, _And a child's vulnerabilities, and malleability, because there's nothing else there yet. So you learn the whole world over again, how it works, cause and effect, what's natural, what's inevitable. That's how you get kids who . . ._ he'd sort of grasped at an example, then sighed again. _Well it's the go-to example, because it's starkest, and that's how you get the kids who get thrown out of school for inappropriately sexualized behaviour - because they_ know _that's all anybody could ever want from them, because that's all they've been taught._

Steve'd thought about it for a minute. _You're saying Bucky had the equivalent of_ multiple _abusive childhoods, one after the other._

Sam rubbed his forehead. _Pretty much. And that shit leaves a lot of marks - I mean, it literally shapes the brain. He might remember when you were kids?_ Sam grimaced. _But the other stuff might basically be mapped in deeper, because it happened so many times over. So much more._

 _Carved in_ , Steve said, and Sam'd winced. 

He's thought about that a lot, since then. 

 

What lights are on, any night Steve comes home after dark, tell a story. By now, he's gotten pretty good at reading them. 

Today'd been cloudy, so one of the kitchen lights and one of the reading lamps in the living room've been on for most of it, with everything else existing in a kind of flat grey light that comes in from the windows and makes everything feel abandoned and quiet even with people right there. Now if it weren't for street-lamps it'd be pitch dark outside, and starting to rain, and those lights are still the only ones on in the whole place. 

That tells a story of Bucky losing track of hours without meaning to, having them slide by. The fact that the heat isn't turned up, even though the temperature outside went down, and the small four-legged shape that trots out and pauses, nose slightly raised, sits herself on her hind-legs and gives a mew that's halfway between a question and a complaint . . .all of that just counts as confirmation. 

Yellow cat eyes are turned more or less in Steve's direction, but they don't really see him. 

It's midnight. Steve left around five-thirty to meet Natasha, Sharon and Sharon's new boyfriend (Adam, also ex-SHIELD, and apparently she'd saved him from being shot in the head by Rumlow which means they have a great meet-cute story) so they could get food before heading to _Chicago_. Steve'd had a couple moments of dissonance of the _this is my life now_ kind over the course of the night, but it'd been good. The show had been good, seeing Sharon not look guiltily at him every ten minutes had been good, and seeing Natasha more or less managing normal for several hours by herself had been good. 

(Barton had bowed out on the basis of thinking musicals were a hanging offence.)

Steve _had_ considered not going, right up to the last minute, even if he hadn't said anything. When in the end he'd decided to go, it had been as much to give Bucky a chance to relax and have a couple bad hours without feeling guilty as anything else - and if _that_ isn't the special kind of logic most people would stare at you funny for, Steve can't think what is, and he probably wouldn't've thought it a year ago. 

Granted, even if you took him-now and swapped him back into the place of him-a-year-ago, he also wouldn't be so sanguine that he could. But it's now, not then. 

He checks the cat-bowls. There's still food, but the silly thing's managed to drop kibble in her water, and she's fussy about the taste, so he empties that out and gives her fresh. Coffee in the pot's dead cold; Steve considers warming it up, then gives the idea a pass for now. 

Bucky's sitting in the second bedroom, which Steve honestly can't figure out how to think of, these days. He'd made it up for Bucky as almost a kind of charm, or concrete prayer, an _if you build it they will come_ kind of thing. Then for a while had been Bucky's room, and that'd been important. It'd been _his_ , territory and ownership clearly delineated. The kind of thing that a person had. It had all the things any person's room might have, and that'd been important, too, even if Bucky used the bed to sit and read on instead of sleep on. Even after Bucky'd stopped sleeping there entirely, it'd been important because of the memory-web on the wall. 

For a while. 

Now, Steve doesn't know. It's been a while since he's seen Bucky in there, although it hasn't occurred to him to ask about it. It doesn't really matter, doesn't need to be solved, because it can sit in a kind of limbo for as long as need be: they don't need a guest bedroom, because frankly it's going to be years yet before Steve even considers actually _believing_ Bucky if and when he insists he doesn't mind having other people here. But his mind rebels a bit at thinking of it as Bucky's room, for the backhand implication that the master-bedroom isn't Bucky's as much as Steve's, and that means there's a little skip inside his head when he thinks about it. 

It also means he's not completely sure how to read the fact that Bucky's retreated to it. And _retreat_ is the right word. 

Steve stands in the doorway, feels a momentary deja vu, his hand reaching out to touch the doorframe almost independent of thought, to make sure of what's real and what isn't. What's then and what's now. 

Bucky's sitting on the single bed with his knees drawn up, forearms resting on his knees, right hand holding his left wrist. He's staring into the middle distance, which in this case means through the coverlet. There are times Steve wonders, not if he used to look frail - he knows he did - but if this is how _seeing_ him that way felt. 

Except in his case there was nobody to actually blame. Well, except maybe God, and frankly that might explain a few things, if that's how it went. 

"I was gonna get up before you came home," Bucky says, distantly. "Guess I waited a bit late." 

"I could go back out and come in again, if you wanted to try again," Steve says blandly, and it gets him at least a flicker of eye-line, a second of focus. 

_Chicago_ had been fun, and Steve'd enjoyed the music and the conceit, but from the minute she'd showed up, every time there was a moment's rest his mind wandered back to the Hungarian girl in the jail, the innocent one in a pit of vipers. She's fiction, ephemeral and dreamed up for a story, with no real existence before the night's show started or after the curtain closed, but part of Steve still wants to think something turned out right for her, in the end. That since she's a few hours' dream, maybe somebody somewhere dreamed her up a happy ending. 

It's a thought that's been nagging at him all night and he's still trying to find something to do with it, so it'll stop, like trying to find the pebble in your shoe so you can get it out. And it's followed by the thought, always, that if someone did, if somehow she _did_ get out of that prison and back into the world, it didn't carry on too long, clinging to every possible corner in her head. 

And there are no prizes at all for figuring out why that's the thing that stays with him. 

When Bucky doesn't say anything, Steve asks, more seriously, "Should I come in or go away?" because even if he's not sure about its purpose or status or anything else, the room's still formally Bucky's and he's not going to get in the habit of ignoring that. And in fact the more Bucky doesn't care, the more Steve's going to stick to that. For obvious reasons. 

Bucky inhales slowly; this time he actually looks at Steve's face. For a while. Sorting through languages, maybe, or maybe just trying to figure out what the answer _is_. In the end he says, "I dunno. Try one, we'll see how it goes." 

There's a hole in the knee of the jeans he's wearing, all the way from seam to seam. The bottom hems are frayed. The knit-cotton long-sleeved t-shirt is grey with a white logo Steve can't quite make out - which means it's old and probably either a gift or a quick thoughtless purchase - and the sleeves are pushed back almost to Bucky's elbows. His hair's tied back and his eyes are tired. Absently, he lets go of his left wrist, switches to holding onto his right. 

Steve goes over to sit on the bed beside him. Bucky's feet are bare, too, like they usually are, and Steve can see the white lines of some of the scars, running over and under. He hasn't asked about those. They're so regular, so systematic, so obviously from something inflicted with purpose that he hasn't really needed to. 

It's hard to get either of them to scar. Even Steve's scars from the surgeries to get rid of the bullets from Insight C are starting to smooth out and fade. That always gives a kind of extra miserable edge to any of the ones he sees on Bucky's skin and these ones probably had to have gone pretty damn close to the bone. 

"What is it?" he asks, when he's settled. Abrikoska pads her way in from the door, having apparently decided to deign to drink something because her chin's still wet, and jumps up on the bed to settle over Bucky's feet in the pose the internet assures Steve is called "cat-loaf". Bucky doesn't really seem to notice. 

"Nothing," Bucky says, without inflection. Which doesn't actually mean _nothing_ , it just means he either doesn't want to talk about it, or he can't. 

Could be either, and there is a difference. 

"Can you come to bed?" Steve asks, on the basis that the answer'll tell him which it is: if Bucky just doesn't _want_ to talk about it he'll take the out, the agreement from Steve not to ask about it in exchange for letting it go and moving on.

But Bucky says, "No. I can't." And the words are still English but the vowel-shape and the cadence slide towards Russian. Bucky shakes his head, rubs at his forehead and closes his eyes, says, "Sorry," shaking that a little. 

"Nothing wrong," Steve says, reasonably. "I was asking, that's all." 

" _Fuck_ , Steve," Bucky sighs, letting his head fall back against the wall under the window, looking up and blinking a few times, "stop being so fucking reasonable, would you?" 

"Probably not," Steve replies. "And I should warn you," he adds, bland, "if you're lining up reasons why I _should_ be pissed off and frustrated, I've got a bunch of new angles to argue with you from and you gave me most of'em."

Bucky laughs, strangled and short, shaking his head and letting it fall forward. Steve reaches over, rests his curved fingers against Bucky's shoulder first to keep from making him flinch, and then sliding up to work briefly into the ever-present tension on either side of Bucky's neck for a minute. 

Then he has to stop and put his hand over Bucky's left, where metal fingers are starting to dig into skin, tendon and muscle on his right and say, "Hey. You should stop that." 

Bucky's mouth twists, but he does. He lets his wrist go, the marks only starting to redden. Closes his left hand tight into a fist instead. He stares at it for a moment and then says, "You should go to bed, Steve," in his uninflected voice again.

"Yeah, you know I'm not gonna do that," Steve replies, resettling himself just to make his point, one leg stretched out and the other bent out to the side, leaning on the wall in a show of being comfortable.

Actually it is pretty comfortable. He apparently picked a good mattress, all that time ago in his compulsive fugue of hope and anxiety. 

"No," Bucky sighs. "I know you're not." He looks up and away for a minute before he says, "You don't need to sit here. I'm not gonna lose it, I'm fine." 

Steve doesn't answer, at least not until the weight of his gaze and the silence make Bucky actually look _at_ him, and then he says, "I'm just gonna look at you like this until you stop being such a stubborn idiot."

Bucky pretends to roll his eyes, and Steve says, "Look, you actually _want_ to be by yourself, I'll - no," he rephrases, reconsidering his words because he knows refusals are a lot easier than requests, "you tell me you _don't_ want me here, I'll go. Otherwise, no." 

Bucky looks down at the cat on his feet, jaw tightening briefly and releasing again. "Nice save," he says. His voice bitter enough that Steve feels himself frown: that kind of bitterness is vicious, and it's always self-directed and stagnant, the kind that worries him. 

"Hey," he says, softly. Bucky looks away, staring at the far wall the way that Steve knows means - well. Means Bucky thinks something bad's going to happen, or at least the very back of his mind - the part that doesn't understand reason, let alone listen to it - thinks so. "What?" 

Bucky's right hand moves to his own throat like he's not really aware of it, fingers resting on his collarbone. "Just shit I can't get out of my head," he replies, trying and failing to sound dismissive and indifferent. And Steve figures - well, he to figure and remind himself that it's _something_ that they're having this conversation without the agitation or the blankness, without all the stuff that normally comes with this kind of thing, but . . . he can't actually say that, on balance, he likes this locked down misery that much better. 

He can see where it technically is. Where it's more like the normal kinds of emotions, instead of stuff yanked around and out of place in the name of survival. But he doesn't like it.

"If you don't want to talk about it, don't," Steve says, making sure he actually means it - and he does. "But otherwise I'm asking." 

Bucky's hand slides from his throat to the seam-scar on his left shoulder, under the neckline of the shirt, while Steve sits and waits for the argument he figures has to be going on inside Bucky's head to sort out which way it's going. And Bucky's quiet for a long time, staring at the far wall with his jaw tight and face in unhappy lines you might not know were unhappy, if you didn't know him. 

In the end, Bucky gives Steve a tired, sidelong glance and then rubs at his forehead with his right thumb. 

"Know why you can't offer me things?" he asks, looking down at the cat on his feet again and still not really seeming to see her. 

"No," Steve admits. "I mean," he qualifies that, "I can make guesses, but I don't _know_." 

Bucky gives him a long look, opaque and guarded and searching; when he says, "So guess," his voice is neutral, barely inflected at all. 

Steve considers for a long time before he does - not the answer, he doesn't need to consider his guess, but more if he _should_ answer. If he should make the guess out loud. And if not, what he should do or say instead. And then how to put words around what he knows. And whether it's a _problem_ if his first guess is wrong, whether that'll mean anything or not. 

And it's funny because even as he thinks about it, Steve knows he feels less . . . adrift than he has done before now, less like he's scrabbling for something to hold onto in a flood. More like just . . .making choices. Important ones, God, some of them so important - but choices, decisions. Feels like he's thinking, rather than drowning.

"I think even responding to an offer implies you have a choice," he says eventually, sober and quiet still, "and you don't want to do that. And I think if you have to answer, you say _no_ , because - " and here he has to be careful with his tone because the words make him angry and this isn't the time for that, "if you were supposed to have it, it'd be given, and you wouldn't get asked." 

Steve knows the guess is right when Bucky _doesn't_ answer. When there's a shadow of pain, in-turned anger and self-disgust instead, flickering quickly over Bucky's face and then gone. And Steve thinks about Natasha, for a moment, and the complicated amusement she'd had earlier when they'd been talking, and how she'd said, _you two deserve each other, you know._

Steve hadn't known how to take that, not then, and he doesn't even know now, not because he isn't sure what she meant but because he _is_. He's had the same thought, lately, even wanted to say it out loud: _you know, we're pretty much as bad as each other._

Bucky stares through the cat and the bed and says, "Took me a while to learn that one," voice level and matter-of-fact and just barely rasping against his throat that must be closing. His left hand moves up his lower right arm, palm flattening like he's trying to rub something off between elbow and wrist. His jaw clenches, and then it looks like he forces himself to let it go. "Sorry," he says. 

Steve moves, pushes himself away from the wall and turns halfway so that when he reaches out and takes Bucky's hands, right and then left, holds them together between his, Bucky only has to look up to look at him, doesn't have to turn his head. And Steve waits until he does.

"You don't have anything to be sorry for," Steve says. And what he wants to do is pull Bucky over, pull him down so they can both stretch out on the barely-wide-enough bed, and Steve thinks he could probably get away with it, but it still wouldn't be . . .the right idea. The best thing. 

Sits and lets the silence be for a minute or two while he tries to think of what the best thing is. And still doesn't feel like he's drowning. 

Eventually he says, "You're not gonna hurt me by telling me, Buck." 

Bucky rests the back of his head against the wall. The look he gives Steve is dark, sardonic and cynical as Hell, and he says, "Bullshit," two flat, biting syllables. 

It's not really funny, and Steve glances down at their hands for a second to suppress the smile he shouldn't have (because he can find the familiar dance funny or he can let it eat at him, and right now funny's the better plan but that doesn't mean showing it is) as he says, "Okay, should I try the one where it's not gonna be anywhere near as upsetting as knowing it's eating away at you alone? Because that one's not bullshit, and you know it." 

There might be the slightest twitch upwards at the corner of Bucky's mouth; it falls away pretty quickly if there is, and he just watches Steve's face for a couple minutes before letting out an almost-silent sigh. His gaze flicks over Steve's shoulder to the wall behind him. 

"Same shit," he says, "different day." And then he stops again and Steve waits, brushing curved fingers back and forth on the back of Bucky's right hand. Bucky looks down, looks through his hands and says, eventually, "Get stupid enough to think I found my balance. Then I'm back here, fucking back _there_ and I can fucking smell it, see it, I can feel the collar around my neck and the cuffs on my wrists and I _can't_ get it out of my _head_." 

The words get faster until they stop, abrupt, like he cut them off or - and Steve grimaces inwardly at himself for thinking up the simile, but it's right there - like the words are jerked back by a leash. Bucky shifts, the cat lifting her head up and making a _mrrt_ sound in response, as Steve watches the disgust flicker over his face again. Wishes he _didn't_ know Bucky aimed it all at himself, because sure, there's call for disgust here, but none of it should be with him. 

Does know it. Knows it, hates it, and understands it better than Bucky'd probably like to think he does.

Steve's thought about the prisoner-transport van before, about why HYDRA would have restraints that _didn't_ underestimate what Steve could break if he really put his mind to it. There were things that SHIELD _hadn't_ known, not from him, because he didn't tell them. His own secrets, because nobody ever thinks the guy who can't lie to save his life can keep secrets, and that's useful sometimes. So he's thought about it, about why, about the comparisons and guesses they'd've been making. It's never been a good line of thought, and never taken him anywhere he wanted to go. 

But he's thought about it. 

"Got so I'd let them put it all on," Bucky says, quietly. Steve feels a faint pressure against his palms, almost easy to ignore and not something he ever would; he lets go of Bucky's hands so Bucky can pull them away. So he can pull them to himself. Almost cradle his left hand in his right, thumb moving over metal like he's looking for something. "Then they didn't need it, mostly. Who gives a fuck about a dead tech every once in a while? Never went farther." 

The words are bitter enough to burn, and Bucky drops his hands in his lap. Lets his gaze move to Steve's face like he's looking for something, something Steve's pretty sure he's not going to find. 

When Bucky starts talking again, it's in Russian and halting, like he's changing the words as he says them and if he is, it's probably because he's trying to upset Steve the least he can. And he says, "All requirements were provided," tone flat. "If something provided was refused, there were . . . consequences. If something not provided was asked for, or accepted - consequences." He rubs at his upper right arm for a second, and says, quieter and less stilted, "Can't get it out of my head." 

After a second, Steve shifts position again. He picks up the cat and moves her, so he can sit with his legs crossed in front of Bucky; she complains a bit more and then pads over to press herself against Bucky's left hip. 

He blinks at her, like he forgot she existed. When he moves his left hand down to stroke her fur, she arches up against it and turns her purr up. 

Steve reaches forward, hooks one hand under Bucky's right ankle and carefully pulls his leg a little straighter, puts Bucky's foot down by Steve's hip and does the same with the other. It makes Bucky look at him, gives the cat a chance to half drape herself up across Bucky's side, hind paws on the bed and front paws on his lap. 

Steve's right hand rests on Bucky's left ankle, light, and he says, "Consequences," and Bucky's jaw tightens again for a minute. His arms cross, pull close to him 

"Different men, different things," he says, and then, "everything is, was . . . given. If it wasn't," and it feels like he's talking around something that wants to choke him, finding a way to explain it he can stand to say, "I didn't have it. Light," he says, looking down. "Heat. Air. Anything. And," he shrugs, small tight movement. "Broken bones heal quickly." He shakes his head; he doesn't pull his left foot away, but when Steve lifts his left hand a little he doesn't like the wary way Bucky's eyes follow it, lets his arm rest on his own leg again. 

"I don't remember _one_ thing," Bucky says, still watching Steve's now-still hand. "One time, it's not one memory it's barely even a damn memory, I remember all of them, at once, _about_ all of them, all tangled up. And I don't _want_ it. That. Any of it. The rest of it. The waking up, the tube down my throat to fill my stomach - the days, smell, him, put an IV in, clean me out to freeze me again - I _don't want it_." 

Abrikoska mews, maybe responding to the way Bucky's whole body twists up tight. It makes him startle, stare at her; distracts him enough that it gives Steve a second to get his own breathing under control. Because right now, he thinks, horror and anger'll hit Bucky's brain the wrong way and he doesn't need that. Doesn't deserve that. 

Steve's imagined most of it. Well, honestly, all of it that he knows about yet. He keeps it to himself, but he's ended up imagining it. And it's still _worse_ to hear Bucky say it, to know all the guesses were right, have speculation turned real. To know it and remember _he hadn't been there_ to do anything about it and now, this time, Steve's not even _angry_ with himself for that, just achingly, brutally sad. 

Bucky exhales like he's purging something, and his right hand goes to his throat again. 

"I don't want it," he says, more rasp to his voice, less edge, "and if you could take it away I'd kill you for trying. That's the end of it. I don't want it and if you tried to take it from me I'd kill you. That's all." 

Steve lets that sit for a second, thinks maybe it's where they were going even if he's not sure where it leaves them. His thumb moves carefully against Bucky's ankle and he watches as after a bit the kitten half-jumps the rest of the way up onto Bucky's hips, settling down to cat-loaf there instead. 

After a bit longer, Bucky's hand comes down from his throat and rests on her back. 

Eventually Steve says, quietly, "You are trying to break your own arm, when I stop you. Aren't you." 

Bucky closes his eyes, breathing a kind of bleak amusement. A sliver of it. "Yes," he says. "I am. And . . .for exactly the reason you think it's for." He looks down at the little animal under his hand and says, dully and in English, "I'm just fucking tired of it, Steve. So fucking tired of all of it." 

"I know," Steve says, when he can't think of anything else to say, anywhere else to go that's easier. So he just goes on, "That's why you should come to bed." And they are past something, or Bucky is, because now he almost laughs. It's a kind of horrible brittle almost-laugh, one on the edge of pain as much as amusement, but it's not the frozen control or curled-in misery that means he's caught, can't move one way or the other. 

It's a release, kind of. 

"You're so fucking hopeless, Steve," Bucky says, and then, "I don't even know why you want me." Same tone, same brittle indifference, like it's as much of a joke as he's trying to make it sound. It isn't. 

"I'll explain tomorrow," Steve replies, the same way - like a joke, except it isn't. And maybe he will, if he thinks Bucky could take hearing it. 

For now he says, "C'mon," and gently tugs Bucky's left leg straight and then turns to unfold himself off the bed. Turns around to wait for Bucky to move the kitten and do the same. 

When Bucky does, he holds the cat up against his shoulder with his left hand. "Fine," he says, drawing fingertip and thumb of his other hand over his eyes. "On your head be it if I break your skull in the night." 

"For the record," Steve replies, calmly, "that's just about the least convincing time you've said anything like that," and he steps out of the way as Bucky pretends to try to shove him into the wall. 

 

He can feel Bucky giving him sideways glances as they get ready for bed. And to be fair rituals of normality feeling a little bit detached for Steve, so probably a lot worse for him. It's just that doesn't mean they're not useful. When the lights are off everywhere else and Bucky finally gives up and lies down, Steve flicks the bedroom lights off, too, and climbs into bed. 

And pulls Bucky to him, top arm hooked underneath Bucky's and then diagonally across his ribs to his shoulder, Bucky's back against his chest. And Steve can _feel_ the tension wrapped around Bucky's bones start to release. 

"See," he says, like he's picking up a conversation they were having before - which, in a way, he kind of is - and hooking one ankle around Bucky's bottom leg, "now I don't have any reason I'll have to let go." 

He feels Bucky take a breath for a response that never makes its way out, gets stuck somewhere between thought and voice. Steve kisses the back of Bucky's neck, draws his hand down to rest against Bucky's stomach, slide under the sleep-shirt and soothe careful circles against his abdomen and the bottom of his ribs. Bucky takes another breath, this one catching in places on the way in and taking some more of the twisted-wire feeling out of his body on the way out. 

"It's over," Steve says, quieter and serious, so utterly, completely dead fucking serious. His hand slides back around to Bucky's side and to his hip, thumb stroking against Bucky's lower back. "I swear to God, Christ, Mary, anyone else you want to fucking name, it's over, Bucky." 

He wraps his arm around Bucky again, tucking his hand under Bucky's other hip until Bucky's right hand finds it and interlaces their fingers instead. 

Almost tightly enough to hurt, but Steve doesn't give a damn. 

"I can't make it so it never happened," Steve says, feeling Bucky breathe, some breaths shorter than others, "but God be my fucking witness, it's over now." 

Bucky doesn't answer, but Steve doesn't really need him to, doesn't _want_ him too if it's going to be hard. Steve kisses the place where Bucky's neck curves into his shoulder, rests his forehead there after and says, "You're here, with me. We're home." 

There's a sudden depression in the comforter and then the pillows as Abrikoska makes her way over to the pillow beside Bucky's head, where she's taken to sleeping; it's only a couple of seconds after she settles herself that she starts to purr. Cat of simple pleasures, a small part of Steve thinks. We should all be so lucky. 

"I know," Bucky says, in the end, hand still tight on Steve's. It's probably closer to a wish than the truth, but Steve'll take it. 

 

******

 

In the end spends most of the night almost sleeping. 

He's tired, he's _so fucking tired_ , so tired; in the other room something twisted up and broke in the end, and letting all the wound up drive out, leaving him empty and exhausted and sick. Tired and wants to sleep, so much. And every time he finds the edge between half-doze and the real thing, the darkness vomits up something all brand fucking new and he's awake again, adrenaline flooding through his body and his head. 

Or, if he's really fucking lucky, he ends up having to claw his own way to awake because he knows what _happens_ if he lets himself finish falling into that dream. Knows it too fucking well. 

And he _knows_ he's keeping Steve awake with every sudden twitch, with every time his breathing changes, every time he moves. The knowledge works its way under his skin like little tendrils of poison until - after maybe the fifth time, maybe the twelfth, he loses track - he tries to get up. 

Doesn't get far. Gets stopped by Steve's hand on his knee. Just resting. Wishes he didn't fucking _know_ how careful Steve is, that his hands never, almost never close around Bucky's arm or wrist or ankle. 

Wishes it wasn't a relief every fucking time Steve doesn't mess that up. Hates how much it fucking gnaws away at the space in the hollow of his chest, the fear that he _might_ , that all of that shit will get tangled around Steve, too. 

That he won't be able to even fucking have _this_. 

"Don't even fucking pretend I'm not keeping you awake," Bucky says flatly, as Steve rolls onto his back and sits up a little against the cushions. 

"M'not," Steve says, and his eyes are sleepy under his worry-line frown. "Come back here anyway?" 

And it's hard to say what yanks harder on which hook dug under his skin, if it's wanting to get away or wanting to do what Steve asks, and for a while Bucky doesn't move, almost can't. Until the part of him that actually fucking _thinks_ , day late and dollar fucking short, points out that if he leaves like this Steve'll just follow, at least as long as he can, and Bucky feels like too much shit to go far enough to leave him behind. 

And it still means Steve not sleeping, so what would even be the fucking point?

Steve waits until Bucky's already starting to lie back down to tug gently on Bucky's left arm, pull him over onto his stomach to rest his head on Steve's shoulder. And Bucky's too . . . not just tired, the inside of his head is too beat up right now not to just take the fucking cue, let his left arm rest across Steve's abdomen, left leg across Steve's right. 

And Steve's _warm_ under him, against him. Steve's been warm - okay, fine, _pace_ fucking being frozen in the middle of the fucking Arctic Ocean he's been warm - since Erskine and Stark-the-first's stupid reckless magic trick. It's enough that either it really did come in handy over Western Front winters or Bucky's distracted enough by it to make up the memory and fucking cling to it. 

Bucky's left arm can't feel it, but it can feel the pulse in Steve's arteries, his body rising and falling with each breath, each muscle expanding and contracting again. 

When Steve works his left hand up under Bucky's shirt to run up and down Bucky's back along his spine, Bucky tries not to be disgusted with himself for wanting to curve into it, doesn't even know _why he has to_ except that right now wanting, needing, taking anything feels weak enough to make him sick. 

And that doesn't do a single fucking thing to make him want it less. Not for sex, not for anything, just - living and human and warm and willing to touch him at all. Wanting to. 

Steve rests his forehead against the top of Bucky's head for a minute. Into the silence, he says, "Bucky I just spent too long remembering how much I fucking missed you when you weren't here and how God-damn awful that was," with the quiet, stripped-raw honesty he has that makes each word twist and dig in, right now, and then pull back like a barbed hook. "Please believe that I would rather have you right here keeping me awake than you be _anywhere_ else." 

And Bucky does, and half-wishes he didn't. Half-wishes with the better part of him, while the selfish bastard who actually runs him, is him, curls around the words like a fucking python in relief, doesn't care about the disgust or the guilt, and tries to choke down the words that come next, so they stick in Bucky's throat like a - 

Like something he doesn't want to think about. Tries to make him keep quiet. Still. 

Eventually, though, he manages to say them, get them out and keep them even and steady. He hates every fucking word, doesn't want any of them, and says them anyway because he has to.

Says, "You know I'm always going to be fucked up, Steve." Steve shifts, moves, and Bucky forces the rest of the words out, "This isn't going to - " he stops, can't make the thought fit, tries again with, "I'm never going to be fixed, there isn't _enough_ of me left to fix, probably isn't enough to make it fucking worth trying," instead. And there's more, but that's as much as he can find the shapes for and make them come out, as much as he can do against the parts that are screaming at him to shut up, that Steve might finally listen and figure it the fuck out and believe it's true. 

Steve moves again, a little, sliding down underneath Bucky, the cloth of his tank-top catching against Bucky's shirt and bunching up. "Hey," Steve says, and his right hand touches the side of Bucky's face, no pressure in the touch but still a wordless request to look up. 

Bucky shifts his weight to lean on his right arm. Pushes himself up to look at Steve, to look at the worry-line on his forehead carve in deep again. Steve's eyes move like he's looking for something in Bucky's face. "Bucky," he says, after Bucky's not sure how long, because he lost track of how time works. "That's not - I don't like you being fucked up because it hurts _you_." His head shakes, just a little. "This isn't a fucking project, I don't need you to _be_ anything for me, Bucky. Just here." 

His hand's still at the side of Bucky's face, thumb tracing over cheekbone. Bucky looks down, can't actually meet Steve's eyes anymore, because - "Steve," he says, carefully, trying to drag himself forward, through this, "that's - " 

And maybe it's a good thing Steve cuts him off; he doesn't even know what he was going to say after that. 

"It's true," Steve tells him, and there's no sleep in his voice now. "It's _true_. That's all it has to be, Bucky. That's all that matters. From the night you threatened Natasha, I've had all I need. Anything else - " he stops, and Bucky looks back at him. Watches his eyes turn up, past Bucky's head to the ceiling, and the cold part of his mind knows Steve's looking for words that aren't going to go wrong. 

And it wonders if he'll find them. 

Steve's eyes flicker one way and another for a few seconds, like he's searching for something; he blinks a couple times, rapidly, before he says - carefully and slowly, like he's making sure the words don't get away, "Yes, okay - I want you not to be unhappy. Yes, I want to help you feel better, to not be . . . miserable, or in pain. But if I can't help with that, Bucky, _I'll fucking live_. I'll deal with it. That's not . . .about me. And I can deal with it." He swallows, line digging deeper still, and says, "I _can't_ deal with it, if you leave. And - " he stops, takes a breath and says, "that's not actually fair." 

Now he looks down, drops his hand to cover Bucky's left hand where it's resting on his chest. "But it's true," he says. Clears his throat. "I can't deal with you leaving, I know I can't. And maybe I couldn't deal with it if you hated me. But anything else I can, and anything else I will, okay?" 

Bucky looks past Steve's shoulder, stares into the leeched-colour blackness of sheets that are mid blue in full light. "You shouldn't _have to_ ," he says, and doesn't get any further than that again. 

" _Bucky_ ," Steve says, and there's something caught in his voice that makes Bucky look at him, means he has to. "Bucky," Steve repeats, softer. "Jesus. Please, Buck, if you took me back to the night you came home the only thing that'd be different is I'd fucking know what I was _doing_ instead of panicking like a God-damned idiot. I would do it again. I would choose this _again_ , every time. And if I could go back farther all I'd do different is find a way to get you home sooner. You know that. I know you know that." 

It's hard to breathe, and Bucky bites hard enough on the inside of his mouth to taste blood. And that doesn't help. He gets enough breath to start, "That's because - " 

"It doesn't _matter_ what it's because," Steve says, over him. Touches his face again, waits until he'll look. "It _is_. This is my choice, Buck. Always, _always_ my choice. Please believe that. If you can't believe _anything_ else, just, please. Believe that." 

And there's a dream he doesn't want. There's a dream he's clawed his way out of, more than once, more than once _tonight_. A dream that might be a memory might not because _who fucking knows_ he doesn't and there's no one to ask because if he ever sees a face that belongs there he will _fucking rip it apart_ , except there might not be any, because it might not be real. 

And the dream he doesn't want is an echo in his chest, in his head, it's been twisting around him for days, because it's like this. It's like this, changes the shape of the world like this. Changed everything, changed him. Been eating at him since he said - since he said something, since he had to, to make a point. Important. A point to make Steve stop, to make sure he didn't think - 

Something. He gave up, he admitted . . . something. And the dream he doesn't want - 

And the dream he doesn't want is the moment he gave in. And the dream he doesn't want is the moment that they won, the time he just stopped fighting, the moment he gave _up_. Curled up on concrete, naked and cold and lost, body screaming and burning who even knows what fucking from, head screaming from everything, _everything_. No name no life no mind _nothing_ , no - 

Might be memory. Maybe something he made up. He doesn't know. He never fucking knows. But the thing it's twisted around, the place in his _head_ is like 

is like

isn't like

isn't like this. 

He's looking down, straight down, Steve's shoulder and the fading white line of healing scar, knife-scar, his scar, and his vision blurs and it's hard to breathe. He manages, " _Damn it_ , Steve," and knows his voice is broken. Doesn't want it to be. Can't change it. 

_Damn it, damn it God_ fucking _damn it, Steve -_

Steve's left hand is behind Bucky's head, now, just resting there, not holding him; Steve's right hand strokes from his neck to his shoulder. Hands, skin; warm and alive. And here. And Steve hasn't said anything. And it's hard to breathe. And he's more fucking selfish than he ever, ever wanted to be, but he can't, Bucky can't anymore, he can't - 

He _can't_. 

"Okay," he says, still fighting because his ribs don't want to work, don't want to let him get air. "Okay." 

And Steve's moving them both, sliding down the bed and curling an arm around Bucky's waist to pull him down and close, until Bucky's not leaning on an arm that might not take him anymore, until they're both lying face to face, Steve's right arm around him, palm to skin, left hand against the side of Bucky's neck. 

Steve leans his forehead against Bucky's, kisses his temples, his eyelids. Doesn't say anything. Smells of skin and a day, toothpaste and soap. Human. Alive. 

_Fuck_. 

And it's . . . time, before Bucky can breathe right again. Before his head is more than red burn and the remembered smell and taste of things trying to write over what's here, what's real, and trying to claw them away, before he can do much more than twist his left hand in the cloth of Steve's shirt to keep from clutching at him instead. Hurting him. Breaking something. 

Before he can breathe, " _Christ_ , Steve."

And Steve can say, "I know." And, "I'm sorry." And, "It's okay." 

They don't say anything else. Eventually Steve lies back again, and Bucky lets himself be pulled over. Feels like a fucking puppet with cut strings. Doesn't care. Can't.

Focuses on Steve's hands against his skin, instead, palm and fingertips moving in slow, lopsided circles, on Steve's fingertips on his scalp. Touch, here. Alive, here. Warm, living, human, here. To Hell with anything else. He can't anymore. 

To Hell with everything else. 

 

At some point, he must fall asleep. He wakes up to the alarm, the faint triple beep, light in the room, his head full of fog and feeling like someone beat the shit out of him except . . . removed, unreal. It takes a minute to realize what he's hearing. 

Steve wakes even slower. By the time he does, Bucky's leaned across him and closed his left hand around the little alarm tight enough to crush the fucking thing, obliterate it, so that it _stops making that fucking noise._

"Mnh?" Steve says, one eye open, as Bucky settles back where he was and pulls the comforter back up almost over his own head. It's not actually that cold in the room, but it feels like it is, until the air under the blankets warms back up. And he doesn't fucking care.

"Not getting up," Bucky says, pretty sure he sounds all of maybe six years old. 

"'kay," is all Steve says, half-yawning, closing his eyes and settling his hands back where they were.


End file.
